Really excellent short story of Atticus and Oberon as they visit Egypt to retrieve a book that was stolen from Atticus.I love learning about the various deities of different locations. Normally Atticus deals with Greek and Roman Gods with a few Norse and Asian Gods tossed into the mix. This is the first story, I remember, with Egyptian Gods. My only quibble is I wish I had known about these smaller stories before I read the actual novels in the series. Things seem a bit out of place when you know Atticus's future and he doesn't! Atticus and Oberon pursue a book-stealing Egyptian crocodile wizard - Nkosi Elkhashab - Atticus has a few books from the library of Alexandria - including an Egyptian 'cookbook of lamb' which is actually 13 magical steps (that include sacrificing lambs) to secretly assassinate someone. Nkosi steals the book, and Atticus and Oberon go to Egypt to retrieve it...deal with attack of cats & Bast (Atticus has a sex practices of the gods book of Bast's)... and he bargains to return the book to her (intending to steal it back soon) ... he locates Nkosi's underground / oasis / treasure trove (not marked by a pyramid on top : )... and rescues a boy in a cage, ambushes and kills Nkosi, and faces the demon the magician had contained... we get different aspects of Atticus' resources - his sword, his magic, his understanding of spells...
This has to be my least favorite of the Iron Druid books, mostly because it's just so heavy on the blood and gore. I normally don't mind that kind of thing, but there's a severe amount of animal death, and I just can't handle that. All of the violence is described in minute detail, as well. Maybe it's because I listened to the audio book instead of reading it, but while I normally feel pretty ambivalent about the Iron Druid books, this one I actively disliked.
—Nina
This has to be my least favorite of the Iron Druid books, mostly because it's just so heavy on the blood and gore. I normally don't mind that kind of thing, but there's a severe amount of animal death, and I just can't handle that. All of the violence is described in minute detail, as well. Maybe it's because I listened to the audio book instead of reading it, but while I normally feel pretty ambivalent about the Iron Druid books, this one I actively disliked.
—mansi
Same Goodness I come to expect, fewer of the normal characters involved.
—donna
Quite short, and very much out sequence with the main series.
—Jessica
Anything Atticus O'Sullivan is great reading!
—billuabbasi
